Quantification and implication of measurement bias of ambient atmospheric BC concentration

Abstract: Black carbon (BC) aerosols have severe impacts on climate and health. Most atmospheric BC loadings are now predominantly reported for the PM2.5 size cut-off. Based on 39 published set of ambient BC concentrations from around the world where PM2.5 and PM10 were collected in parallel, we demonstrate that BC in PM2.5 was only around 80% of that in PM10. The implication is that around 20% of BC in the global ambient atmosphere is ignored with the now-legacy PM2.5 sampling approach. Correspondingly, BC of freshly emitted particles from combustion activities is dominantly reported in terms of PM2.5, and thus inflicting a bias in the total BC emission inventories. A consequence is that ambient BC is underpredicted when derived from models based on (PM2.5) emission inventories. This consideration contributes to reconcile existing systematic offset between model predictions and observation-based estimates of climate-relevant effects of anthropogenic BC aerosols. We propose that total ambient BC concentration should be considered rather than the PM2.5 portion to reduce the uncertainties in estimates of BC effects on the climate.